DOWN IN THE FLOOD

As Katrina rages, Danny Chaisson (The Burying Field, 2002, etc.) chases two ex-cops who may kill his client. The real question, however, is much bigger and darker: Who killed New Orleans?

With the levees breaking and the water rising relentlessly, the truth is both unbearable and unavoidable: “New Orleans was dying, and there were men in the darkness who were ready to finish it off.” Among these are a pair of murderous ex-cops, remorseless as the storm itself. Danny, a lawyer with a thorny conscience, pursues the lowlifes who are holding his client Louis Sams prisoner thorough the “toxic gumbo” that was once his beloved city. Decent, courageous Louis is preparing to testify before a grand jury about fraud and corruption in unassailable places. The bent cops, now hired guns, have been sent to stop him any way they can. Danny, who holds himself responsible for counsel carelessly offered, knows he must stop them if he’s ever to sleep easily again. While he’ll do everything he can to keep one man alive, he knows in his heart that soon his “city will be full of dead” and that killers in the corridors of power will probably go unpunished.

Bleak through and through, of course, but it’s one of those stories begging to be told, and Abel puts you there.